Welcome to CTV-i - the Interactive Information Service. Select an option from the express entry menu.

And so began your foray into the world of early interactive television, thanks to the people who ran Staten Island's Community Television.

Of course, this wasn't the modern digital interaction that we were all used to: instead of pointing a remote control at a digital set-top box, you called a number (718-727-0235 - "Call seven-two-seven, oh-two-three-five to take advantage of CTV-i!") and, if there wasn't someone already on the line, you would be whisked away listening to the announcer guide you through the various screens.

There were actually a multitude of voices on CTV-i. The official announcer dude made the important booming statements, while a lesser secondary voice would give you input prompts; for example, the first two sentences of this story were read by the lead announcer, while key presses were announced by another voice.

The most popular section, by far, appeared to be the games section, where you could partake in various interactive puzzles. Actually, they were called puzzles, but these games were more akin to an old Sierra adventure game - you would choose one of three or four different actions, and those actions either led to your death or the next screen.

The most popular game, it seems, was an adventure, quest, or something. Since I was a young lad in the 1990's, I only have vague fuzzy memories of this game, but it's the most prominent memory I have:

You find yourself at a fork in a deserted dirt road. One path leads to a creepy old house; one path leads to the unknown. What do you do?

Whatdoyado?!

The first line was read by booming-announcer-guy, while the second one was read by a New Yorker trying to sound like a scared Shaggy from Scooby-Doo (for those of you not native to NYC: the second voice didn't sound right at all.)

From this opening line you would be presented with two options: you could go to the creepy old house, or the unknown (there may have been a third option, but I don't recall). If you went to the creepy old house you could have to navigate your way through several screens of disasters to find your way to the ending.

This game was pure evil. Every time you died the system would hang up on you, ending your session (even if you had time remaining). And, when the system hung up, it meant someone else was going to call in and play that damn game.

Of course, this frustration was increased by the fact that every wrong choice results in your death. Because of this, you could literally spend hours calling in to get to the end.

Once you got to the end, what did you get? Nothing. The game was over, you won, CTV-i session ended.

But all was not lost. Even if you did remember the path by heart, there was still fun to be had: competition with other callers and crashing the CTV-i system.

Competition happened sporadically, but it was fun. Basically, you would finish "the game" and the next caller would finish "the game" - but they did it faster than you. So you, therefore, had to finish faster than them. Repeat this loop until ...

You crashed CTV-i. Yup, you could crash CTV-i, almost at will. I don't recall the very early days of CTV-i, but in the mid-90's the system was, apparently, run on Windows NT (or 95). The crash didn't do anything special, as there were never any real diagnostics messages or anything cool like that, just a Windows desktop with a MS-DOS shell open (it had some text, but on television is was unreadable). Alright, I admit this isn't cool by todays standards, but as a 'tween wannabe-hacker in the mid-90's, seeing something like this was really frickin' awesome.

Update: I'm told that the CTV-i software was actually written for the Amiga, using a custom phone interface to decipher the telephone signals. Cool stuff!

If I recall correctly, the easiest way to crash CTV-i was simply mashing a bunch of numbers on the keypad (especially hash and asterisk); however, there was one caller who knew how to crash this system at will. The sequence always started with 1-3-6, but then it descended into random insanity. It was funny as hell when it happened - and you know it was going to happen because nobody ever went to that screen - and it was made even funnier late at night when the caller decided to crash the system after everyone at CTV-i had gone home for the night.

Ah, memories.

Update: Hey, I got an e-mail from someone over at Staten Island Community Television!

The persons that were in-charge of CTVi no longer work here and when they left the new administration discontinued this service. It's been
over 8yrs. and CTV has lost contact with them. Sorry.

Horrible grammar and spelling aside: fuck. I didn't even get a name. OK, so I wasn't expecting anything, really - the service hasn't been around in almost a decade! Ah well, what's dead is dead, right?